Inside the Studio: Motto

Narrator: This episode of A Change a Brand is brought to you by Future London Academy, the executive school for creatives. Keep listening to learn more.

Sonny Bonnell: I mean, we've been inside thousands of organizations at this point and we've seen the good, bad and the surprising. And the thing that come, we always come back to is, is the vision clear? Is the culture the heart of the home? And is the brand authentic and reflective, genuinely of those two things? And if you can get those layers right, you have a very, very unstoppable company.

Narrator: Hey, everyone.

Blake Howard: Welcome to A Change of Brand, a

Narrator: show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory, drama or disaster.

Blake Howard: I'm your host, Blake How.

Narrator: As many of you know, we just wrapped season six and are now running a special bonus miniseries going behind the scenes of select studios in the branding industry. As someone who has been a part of that world for two decades, I've always wanted to learn how others run their business. From getting new clients to process, to culture, you name it, I'm curious and I want to know all about it. Really. I've only ever known matchstick and so I'm fascinated to hear how others do it as well. Today is a real treat. Motto and the co founder, Sonny Bonnell have always been a group that I admire. They do beautiful work and have a really clear point of view on how organizations should think about brand as a business asset. I was really curious to learn more about their founding story and how they have positioned themselves in the tech and innovation space. They are a group that seems to always embrace new technology. So we dabble into a conversation around AI and the realities of using it as a creative agency as well. And of course, we couldn't help ourselves to have a little banter about Cracker Barrel and Jaguar. Sunny is incredibly down to earth and a joy to speak with. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Blake Howard: So, Sunny, I feel like your name's pretty easy to pronounce, but I have learned through bad experience that when you grow up in middle Tennessee, you cannot assume how to say someone's name the correct way.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. No, that's fair. And people get motto wrong too, so how do they get motto wrong all the time? M. Moto. Because people go, hello, Moto. You remember that? Yeah. No, no, Sunny, people don't get wrong.

Sonny Bonnell: But they get my last name wrong all the time. So it's Bonnell. Bonnell.

Blake Howard: Bonnell.

Sonny Bonnell: It's French.

Narrator: Okay.

Speaker D: Yeah. Okay.

Blake Howard: I will confess that French and middle Tennessee do not get along.

Speaker D: Do not mix.

Blake Howard: Yeah, let's talk More about Motto and, and the backstory. I mean, how did you, where, where did you start?

Sonny Bonnell: South Carolina. So we got our start in South Carolina and then we moved to Dallas and then we were in New York and we got our book deal in New York and then we've been in New York ever since. But, uh, but yeah, yeah, in the south. But we were only there for a couple of years until we sort of like took off. Uh, but you know, back then it was like deep south, you know, two

Speaker D: young women trying to launch a rocket into space. And everybody looked at us like, lots of resistance. Yeah, lots of resistance. You know, a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean it's, it's wild.

Blake Howard: What led up to that moment for you decide to kind of go out on your own?

Sonny Bonnell: Well, it's helpful to probably set uh, up what Motto is. So Motto is a brand transformation agency. We primarily work with visionary leaders and leadership teams in the tech and innovation space. Been around since 2005 and have been on kind of a 20 year stint. We're actually celebrating our 20 year anniversary this year, this past March.

Blake Howard: Congrats.

Sonny Bonnell: Thank you. And I think Motto was really born out of a belief that Brand is the most powerful business tool that, that a company has at their, at their disposal. And we saw that many organizations were treating Brand as a marketing exercise rather than, uh, inside out job. And we wanted to really educate that. We believe that Brand was strategy, it was culture, it was vision. And how could we help teams unite around and galvanize around that concept while also helping them define the true signature idea that sits at the heart of their business to differentiate them? And that's really how Motto was, was, uh, catapulted into the world.

Blake Howard: Yeah. And at that time, 2005, Brand was absolutely thought of as a marketing exercise. And I feel like the market in general for brand agencies has matured. You know, like there's more competition than ever. It's a little bit more defined brand. Back then though, it was sort of like if you're a PR firm, you're like, oh yeah, we can, we can do brand things. Or if you're a PR agency or marketing, you know, it was all sort of, yeah, we can do that too. It was more rare to find somebody specialized in brand or brand identity.

Sonny Bonnell: So we, we got started in the south and it was primarily advertising agencies. So very few teams and organizations really, any, any company, uh, defined themselves as a branding company. You were either kind of in graphic design or you were in advertising, or you were in marketing. And so when we Began calling ourselves that. It was actually quite a new phrase, at least in our local community. And then beyond that, as we began to scale, we really began to learn that there was an education component to what we were doing, which was working with leaders. And we really started out as leadership consultants, working directly with leadership teams to help them align around vision. We realized that there was actually a lack of education of what a brand even meant, and more importantly, what it encompassed. And so it was really important for us to spend our time doing great work, but also educating around that work and why that work was important.

Blake Howard: Yeah, that's good. You know, the Matchstick founding story is very similar. So we were around that same time doing graphic design. I. I studied graphic design, started Matchstick at a really young age and just wanted to do great work and wanted to treat people well. And, you know, push is the craft as far as I could. But I would consistently get frustrated at creative briefs changing or agreements changing with clients. So we would get further down the road. Round two, round three. And then someone say, you know, actually, I don't know if I like this anymore. You're like, well, why don't you like it? Well, I don't know. It's just not. It doesn't pop. And so I would continue to, like, push and dig deeper and ask harder questions. And then one day I realized, wait a minute, that's brand strategy. And people would say, hey, yeah, yeah, the logo is great or the design work is great. But like, that, that discovery session or like some of those workshops we did, like, that was the real magic. And then that was the meaning that, uh, that's kind of where, you know, our sweet spot came from as well.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Sonny Bonnell: And that's how Motto's name was born. Because we were like, why don't more companies talk about why they do what they do, not how they do it or what they do, but why? Why are you doing this? And so motto is a purpose, cause, or belief. And it was the number one thing that drove the meaning of our name, which was going inside companies and asking them, what do you believe in? Why does it matter? And who should. Who do you need to rally around that? And that became not only our name, but our positioning. And we drove that for a really, really long time. And it wasn't until 2019 that, uh, my co founder, Ashley, and I got a. And partner got a book deal. And that just propelled us into a very different platform. And we realized that we couldn't keep up with the demand. And so we begin to scale our team. So interestingly, Motto is kind of like a five year old startup because we've been, we've been doing it forever, but we didn't really grow a very big team until the last five or six years.

Blake Howard: I'm curious, and you've answered this a little bit. What is Motto's sweet spot? You know, like the types of projects that you just crush it on, you know, you consistently can deliver on. And I think this is an interesting question because if we're honest, most agencies have something that they're just really good at and then they sort of fill in the gaps with other capabilities, but it's hard to do everything really well. We, we've always had a belief that we're going to focus on brand identity and consulting through that, but we're going to be excellent at that. And you know, when it comes to downstream implementation, we're going to bring in other partners that are best in class to really like own that and run that. So I'm curious for you all, what do you feel like is your sweet spot?

Sonny Bonnell: Well, I would say leadership alignment. I think that's probably the core of everything we do, which is these organizations are going through periods of growth and evolution and we help founders and leaders take what's in their head, that big audacious vision, and we drive it all the way through the culture and brand. What we're really significant at is understanding the operational and cultural challenges that come with driving change through the organization in a way that is agile enough and adaptable enough that people begin to adopt it as if it's their own. And so the communication around that is really key. We do that through what we call ideas worth rallying around, which I'm sure you'll get get into. But we've learned that at the heart of every brand is a signature idea. A signature idea that it's not a tagline, it's not a positioning statement, it is the ethos of how you work as an organization and the things that you believe in and driving that anchoring statement through everything that you do. And it helps to galvanize your people, but it also helps to galvanize what it is that you believe in and how to create such a simple statement that allows people to own it, believe in it and support it, and help you build the thing that you're trying to build. And that's taken a lot of work. I mean, we've been inside thousands of organizations at this point and we've seen the good, bad and the surprising and the thing that come we always come back to is. Is the vision clear? Is the culture the heart of the home? And is the brand authentic and reflective genuinely of those two things. And if you can get those layers right, you have a very, very unstoppable company.

Blake Howard: I've always been a fan of the ideas worth rallying around that language. Just seeing your website and I was curious, you know, how did you land on it? Was it something that naturally came out? Like as you were working with clients over time, was it something else that triggered that thought? Like, at what point did you kind of land on that mantra?

Sonny Bonnell: Well, I think that it naturally aligns itself to our name and of course our branding is the flag and planting the flag and building out war cries for companies and really helping them make something bigger and audacious for everyone that they need to encourage and inspire. But it really came out of years of asking one question, critical question, which was, what makes people align, commit and care? And we realized that the best brands, those that build movements, not just companies, they always had a, uh, galvanizing, centralized idea that they could communicate well. And it formalized into a philosophy that now has just become the thing that people come to us for. They'll often say, like, oh, we've heard you, you guys are the big idea company. Or we heard, we hear that you don't just do brands. You help me as a leader, articulate the thing that matters most to me and helps me make sure that I can get the buy in from the people that matter within my company. And also, how does that then extend to my audience? And I think we just do it better than anyone really.

Blake Howard: How do you guys go about winning new projects, new clients, new business in general?

Sonny Bonnell: I think it's through, I would probably say three things. So I would say reputation, thought, leadership, and our work. And I think the first two are m. More important. I think our work is really good. I think it's authentic. I think it solves the problems, uh, that our clients come to us about. And obviously it changes their business in such a way, an incredible way. But you have to have a point of view. And I think our thinking around these subjects and also the kind of reputation that we've been able to achieve and then our work as a result of that, it's a result of that deep discipline. I think it's allowed us to attract the right kinds of clients who a lot of times they'll come, they'll come through and they'll say, I've read your book or I have heard about you and I'VE been watching you for, I've been watching you from afar for quite a while. And I've read all your content, I've been studying you on social media. And a lot of our very best clients come through that lane.

Blake Howard: What about clients that wouldn't be a good fit or that you might pass on? And this is a, uh, tension that I want to call out because I feel that sometimes that demand for new business can come colliding in with your values and you have to make decisions around do I really believe in what they're doing? I'm also just one of 25 on the team, and there's 25 different subjective preferences of what the world should be like. And so how do you manage that tension? And do you draw a line of what types of clients you may or may not take?

Sonny Bonnell: Yeah, I mean, we say no to clients that don't align with our values or where we feel the leadership isn't bought in. And that's. Takes a lot of courage to say no, especially when you have a lot of people behind you, you have an army behind you of people to take care of. But sometimes the monetary reward and the price you pay in other ways is not of equal value. And I just have always believed that if you say no for the right reasons, the right one comes along. And thankfully, we haven't had a lot of scenarios where motto has had to turn down clients. And I think that's a result of our positioning. I do. I think when you, when you are very clear about who you are, you become a lighthouse for people who are aligned with that. And if they're not, you can feel the tension right away. And you have to make decisions based off of, uh, and this is something I've learned, and maybe you've learned this, but sometimes if I, in the early days, I was always the person that when a client came in, they would talk to me and, or Ashley and my co founder. And sometimes I might not get along or think that they're right, but our account manager would be perfectly, not, not only better at me, at the relationship, but incredibly successful with that relationship. And so I've had to learn how to understand on that scale what that looks like. Just because you might not be right for me personally, and I think I might kind of lock horns with you, doesn't necessarily mean that a really strong account manager, a really strong project manager might not be the one to unlock success in that. And that that took me some, some time to learn. I think, I think you have to know who you Are. And I think when you broadcast that, it makes it easier to, to not only get the right kinds of people through the door, but also to know when something is going against your values and how to be, uh, self aware enough to say, okay, I think this might not be right for me or my team and be able to make that call.

Blake Howard: Yeah, that's good. And some of that trickles into how you staff projects. So what we will do if something comes in that's on the fringes of, are we sure we should take this or not? If one, one easy, simple way is, hey, do we have a team that we could staff on it that we think would bring their, their all and would really knock it out of the park? And if not, we, we have to pass, you know, um, if so, hey, hey, that's great and we, we can take it. But we do want to give our team a lot of choice and a lot of say in it because there's nothing worse than being handed a creative task for something that you just are opposed to or you feel against. I mean, you're just not going to do a good job.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Sonny Bonnell: Morally or ethically, when you venture into that, it can be really tricky. Uh, but to your point, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. It's almost like a football team. And something I've learned along this road, I guess, if you will, is that, uh, sometimes when a client comes in and they sort of ask me, like, I've met with them and the team has sort of brought me like, hey, I think this is the right client. And you can almost think of the team you would assemble and sometimes assembling the team to your point and, and making sure that the chemistry is there and putting the, the right people with the right client is everything. It's like, it is absolutely a talent game. And you have to be very selective in how you pair that and you want to make the right choices because you want to win every time and you do that. And sometimes I would also say that if you're in a project and you begin to see that the roster is not right, that you have to have the courage and the tenacity to actually make the change and say, you know what, I'm going to pull this person from the project or, you know, shift some things around and. Because your ultimate goal is to have a successful outcome not only for you, but for them.

Narrator: Are you looking for an executive mba but feel like traditional business schools are not built for creatives? Then check out Future London Academy's executive program, specifically designed for creative and Design leaders with 15 plus years of experience. Learn finance, business strategy, operations from Pentagram, Uber, Zaha Hadid Architects, Google and more. Across nine immersive weeks in London and California, you study with your peers from around the world, building powerful connections for life. And the best part, you don't need to quit your day job to attend. This award winning program is split into five practical modules across one year. If you're ready to scale your business or take your career to the next level, join future London Academy today at bit ly future MBA. That is bit ly futureMBA. Or check the show notes for the link.

Blake Howard: Okay, back to the show. Tell us more about the brand culture work that you do and how, how do you tee it up to your prospects or your clients of the value in it and, and maybe just unpack it a little bit more because I think it's, it's an interesting angle into, into what I would just call branding brand identity to really focus on what you said earlier, the inside out, you know, the brand culture piece. Tell us more about that.

Sonny Bonnell: I think the biggest disconnect in a lot of companies is who they are and who they say they are and the brand that they're in are at war. And the greatest gift that we can give in our profession to a company is to create a brand that truly reflects the people of that culture and their ethos and belief systems and create a brand that's going to empower them into their next chapter, whatever their next layer of growth is.

Speaker D: Right.

Sonny Bonnell: And the thing that I see the most that was how often the leadership team is not all rowing in the same direction and they don't even know why or they don't have the language to get them back on the same track. They look for consensus, but consensus is not how you get to the moon. Somebody has to say, this is the hill we're marching towards and this is the flag we're going to carry. Decisive leaders have really strong outcomes because they're able to communicate what it is that they want, what they see, what they're trying to build toward. And then if you can draw that down into the culture and the culture understands that belief and adopts it as if it's theirs, then you just have a marching army of people going in the right direction. When your team is indifferent to the hopes and dreams that you have and they don't believe in it, or they don't believe they have any contribution to it and their work does not matter to that you have an apathetic team and an apathetic team holds organizations back from greatness.

Blake Howard: Yeah. Or they don't speak up when they should. So recent examples, Cracker Barrel or Jaguar, or even way back to 2008 and Gap, I've heard, I've heard inside stories about what happened with that Gap fake, false rebrand. And it was a CEO driven initiative. And it seemed like they just sort of went pedal to the metal, told everyone it was happening, rolled it out in many, many leaders were like, what's. Wait, what, why? And then that's exactly what the market said, you know, So I think, uh, I think there's a lot of connection to alignment and reinforcing change when it does happen, because you need those ambassadors inside the organization to say, no, this is us.

Sonny Bonnell: I, uh, think what you now see is companies retreating to beige castles, which is they launch a rocket and then quickly try to bring the rocket back to the landing pad. And I think that's more dangerous than ever because now what you have is, or I think you will have, is companies who will not be bold because they believe that the backlash, they won't be able to withstand the backlash in rebranding in particular, especially when you rebrand, uh, a legacy brand or an iconic brand in any way that you have to always be asking the question, how much is too much? How little is too little? And that is a delicate dance. That is a ballet, not a rodeo.

Blake Howard: Yes, absolutely. I think your point about beige castles and retreating to that. I've never heard that phrase, but I really love it. You know, as this is being recorded, the Cracker Barrel debacle is within a few weeks of them actually going back to the original logo. During that, when they announced it all, the blowback happened. And then they went back that week, I had three separate conversations with three different clients all being afraid of changing too much. And they were in various stages of the process. One was kind of in the prospecting conversation. And the first conversation we had, they were whole hog change. And I was actually the one saying,

Narrator: let's slow down and let's do some research.

Speaker D: And.

Blake Howard: And then all of a sudden they were like, okay, we're a little concerned. And then we had others that were about to launch on the precipice of launch, and they were like, we think we need to delay because of all this. And I actually thought that was the right decision to delay because you just, you do need to let some of this pass before sort of entering in with bigger transformation. And to me, the biggest key is, can you substantiate the Change with the right story and does the story make sense? And, and I think the story with Cracker Barrel or several others, the story is just not there. And it's a positioning issue more, more than anything. And so I've had to uh, remind our clients, hey, this is what they did wrong, this is what we're doing right. But to go back into retreat to those beige castles is going to be more damaging to the long term success of your business at this point than going for it. So I think you're dead on. The, the real reality or the real damage is that some people will be m more gun shy now because of what they witnessed happening on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

Sonny Bonnell: Well, and also if you actually dig into the metrics of what they did, it was driven by data that proves that up leveling the restaurant experience can actually improve the brand standing. And other brands had been proving that. And I believe that's why they started to make that rollout which quite frankly was, was needed. Whether or not they should have abandoned some of the things that were really sacred to the brand. Uh, there's a lot of debate around that. But you pair that with a rollout that I think in any case, no matter what, no matter what you're doing in today's landscape, with any brand evolution, any and driving the meaning behind your decisions becomes incredibly important.

Blake Howard: You mentioned leaders that are decisive or more successful. And I think that is a key behavior that leaders need in going through a brand transformation process. There's lots of moments where you need to make decisions and if you drag your feet or if you are hoping to please everyone or you're looking for that consensus, it can be really difficult. What, what else do you feel like makes a really good client for you all?

Sonny Bonnell: Well, you, you mentioned decision as decisiveness is a big one. I think ambition, courage, open minded and committed, disciplined and willing to take guidance. We often hire people and then try to tell them what to do. And uh, I think that really hurts an opportunity when as leaders, every leader has blind spots. Every brand and business has blind spots. And you would fare well to ask and learn what those blind spots are in order to remain objective, but also to close those gaps and help have people help you close those gaps. You know, in our best clients, like they want to be challenged, they're incredibly committed. The leadership team isn't off not paying attention to this project and not committed to this project. They don't come to us just like make this pretty. They come to us and say make this matter. And you do that by being a strong partner and by, uh, being a friend, but a friend that tells you the truth and remaining just far enough away that you can be objective and also help them see themselves from orbit. Because it's the hardest thing to do, to see yourself objectively, to take constructive criticism and in some cases dismantle or disrupt your own thinking about what you thought was true or what you thought you should be doing. And, and so when you partner with a really good team who's really good at their job, listen, listen to understand. Because when you do that, you can uncover things about your, you, you can uncover things about your business and your brand that you, that you didn't know before. And it allows you to be more powerful as you move forward.

Blake Howard: Yeah, that's really good. And there's a balance in there of your ability as a leader to be decisive, which takes, you know, conviction and courage and confidence. But then you also have to have, um, almost an opposite skill of letting the expert give an opinion and really listening to their recommendation. I found that those two sometimes go head to head. Sometimes you can have a very decisive leader who's incredibly dominant and they have a vision and they're going to do it. And no matter what your recommendation is, they're going to circle back around to that original idea that the, they mentioned five or six times on the calls, you know, and that's just their thing.

Sonny Bonnell: It's a, it's a really interesting point.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Sonny Bonnell: I mean, having worked with a ton of visionaries and on my team, considered the visionary of the company, I know that to be very true. And the thing that has gotten them to where they are is by being incredibly bullish. They've been underestimated, they've been doubted, they've had to fight for their vision, they've had to wrestle their vision forward in a world trying to stop them. And so you have to get that off the shoulder before you can begin to reason with what the, that unreasonable mind is. And, uh, it's, it's the thing that makes them so incredibly good at what they do. And it's the thing that you have to work really hard to unknow. Like there's a bomb there and I have to sort of dismantle it a little bit if I. And, and I know I need to know how to do that. And you have to do that, and you need to know how to do that. For a myriad of types of leaders, some who are very dominant, some who are really quiet, but have very strongly held beliefs, but don't actually aren't the ones pounding the fist on the table. And how do you. How do you navigate that? And then how do you give space and oxygen to the rest of the people in the room who also believe in the vision and want to are there for the right reasons, but, you know, know that there are. There are things that they need to accomplish in order to achieve the visionary's dream. And the visionary dream, often, I've learned, is not the. They're always the why people, but they're rarely the how. You. Sometimes you'll get the rare combination of someone who's a visionary, who's the why, and the how person, but they're pretty rare.

Blake Howard: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's. It's interesting when you're in a scenario with clients that they have an idea that they want to sort of push ahead or. Or maybe they take the reins in a creative process. And then as the agency, the experts in the room with this particular craft, you are in a position sometimes. And I often have to say this, actually, uh, not often. I will say this maybe once a year to a client.

Speaker D: Hey, let's be pretty important.

Blake Howard: Yeah. Hey, we are experts in what we do, and you're an expert in your business. You hired us, and you paid a premium for us to come in and to give you our opinions. We think this is the wrong move, what you've sketched out or what you're trying to push for.

Narrator: We don't think that's the right move

Blake Howard: for X, Y and Z reasons.

Narrator: But ultimately, it's your business.

Blake Howard: You have to make that decision. And sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. But in my mind, when you get to that place and it feels a little adversarial, that's not. That's not a good sign of a good agency client partnership. You know what. What else for you. Do you feel like. Are there. Are there signs where it's like, oh, this is a really. This is a. This is a hard behavior that a client might have that you really try to. To avoid.

Sonny Bonnell: Hot sauce on the brain. We call it Hot sauce on the brain.

Speaker D: Tell me more.

Blake Howard: I like that phrase.

Narrator: Is that your.

Blake Howard: Is that your next book title?

Speaker D: No, but it's in Rare Breed, actually, our book, Rare Breed, A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different,

Sonny Bonnell: which is all about, uh, how do you deal with the things that make you great? They can become your virtues, but they can also be your vices. And so we go into deep about things like rebelliousness and audacity and emotion and how those things are considered counterintuitive to success, uh, and often not favorable in the room.

Speaker D: But we see them as virtues, if

Sonny Bonnell: you know how to harness them.

Speaker D: And one of the things that we say in. There's a chapter, I believe, called Hot sauce on the brain.

Sonny Bonnell: And it's really about this kind of mentality of, and I think it's more prevalent than ever, which is everything is on fire. We must move quickly, we must abandon camp,

Speaker D: we must launch this today and, uh, tomorrow.

Sonny Bonnell: And interestingly enough, that erraticness is the issue. It's not that you want to be efficient and perform well and quickly. If you look at Formula one teams, they undo a car's tires and service a car in under two seconds and get a car back on the racetrack. And the performance of a team that is that well orchestrated and that efficient and that quick, they're the best in the world at what they do. Companies don't know how to learn from that. They think erratic, crazy fast. Get it done. We've got to get out there is the way it's done. If you're a startup or this is just the way we work, when in reality you don't want to be hot sauce on the brain ever. And I find that when you have that kind of mentality from a leader, it can be really challenging for teams to work in that kind of environment. It's not about being efficient, it's not about being productive. It's about precision and you can be precise with less stress. And I even work with this on our team, where I talk a lot about reduce friction and trust, make trust the benchmark so that I know you're going to be where I need you to be, doing what I need you to do, and I can trust that you're going. That's what Formula One teams do. It's all about trust and precision. And they rehearse and rehearse it and do it again and do it again until they get it to where that's under two seconds flat. And it's an incredible feat to be able to do that. And that is an incredible team and we can learn a lot from that, not only in our own businesses, but in our clients businesses. So when I get that feeling from a leader, I can feel my own self tense up and, and sort of be like, okay, this is going to be a rodeo.

Blake Howard: Yeah, that's right, buckle up. You know, I've sometimes used the, uh, the metaphor of it's sort of like riding a bucking bronco and with some, some clients or Some leaders and our job isn't to pull the reins and force their head one way or another, but it's actually to just sort of nudge with your knees.

Sonny Bonnell: Yeah, yeah. Or slow is fast. That's a good one. Like I think, I'm not sure if that's the army or the navy or what, but it's a, it's a phrase. Slow as fast.

Blake Howard: Yeah.

Sonny Bonnell: And, and it's, it's pretty, it's such a. Oh. I mean it's a mantra that so many people should try to learn.

Blake Howard: Yeah, that's good. As, as you move forward and you're leading, you know, a large mid size, I would say agency. What's important to you in balancing great work, the craft, the business side, making sure it's sustainable and the right culture or the right environment for the team.

Sonny Bonnell: Balancing great work with great culture and also expectation setting. We have a very, very deeply held set of beliefs and values. We hire against them, we fire against them, we work against them. I want everybody when they come in to know, hey, there's going to be conversations that are going to have to be really candid with one another. I think too many cultures operate on a precipice of like a iceberg. You know, here's the tip of it, but below it is all the things we don't discuss and we are not that kind of culture. I feel that's not a great culture to have quite frankly. It's also important to make sure that you are looking out for the well being across the entire company. So when you begin to spot things within the culture, whether it's team or talent or whatever it is that's impacting that your job as a leader is to sort of evaluate that and make the right decisions and make those right decisions quickly because they can impact your, the heart of the team. Anyone's greatest gift is to feel that they've been seen and that they have been acknowledged no matter how small or how big that their, their contributions are. We have a lot of people on our team. Some of them are really quiet, some of them are really more, you know, vocal in the room and things like that. And we always try to open space for them because we really believe that it's important to hear what they're thinking and feeling but also more importantly to reward them on the things that they're doing incredibly well. That a lot of times they're not always visible. I think leadership is really tough. You won't always be loved, you won't always be liked. That isn't the role of the leader. The role of the leader, I heard a quote one time, is to, uh, restore calm and absorb chaos and also to not get so down on yourself. Because it. My dad used to say, if everybody could run a company, they would. And the truth of the matter is, is that most people cannot. It is so challenging to run a company and manage human energy and especially human energy that is incredibly creative and incredibly talented, and move them to an important goal again and again.

Blake Howard: Yeah, I, um, think the aspect of leading creatives makes it much more difficult. And that was almost at the heart of the question of finding that right balance. Because I have found there are some agencies that, I mean, they can really crank the revenue and the business side, but it's at the expense of the talent or the team or the culture or even the client. And so in order to balance all of those things, it's incredibly difficult where, you know, on the opposite end of that spectrum, if you say, hey, um, hey, Blake, you've got a hundred hours to work on this logo, I'm like, that's great. I'll take it. I'll take all of it. Actually, I'll probably spend 120 because I want to just pour my heart and soul into this, this creative task. So there has to be some sort of a balance between, we call it the three legged stool. Sometimes where you've got to, you've got to have the right environment, you've got to have a sustainable business and you've got to push to do really high quality work because that's what you're known for. That's what people pay for, that's what they want. That's your expertise. And so I, I think the tension around all of those things are interesting and I love learning how others find ways to balance it.

Sonny Bonnell: You want to hire people that also know their own capacity and threshold. If every night I'm telling you to go home, you need to work on that.

Speaker D: Right?

Sonny Bonnell: Because that's something that I can't, uh, there's no way for us to, I think, as leaders, to balance all of that for ourselves and for others. But you're right in that it is really important to educate on. Like, hey, look, these are our typical working hours. If you choose to work on a Saturday, we understand that's on you.

Speaker D: Right?

Sonny Bonnell: Like if you want to do that. But if it becomes something where there's a lack, there's a, there's just a churn and burn and, and you're not digging into why that's happening, what I found is that sometimes it's not actually that the. There's too much work, it's in the way that we're working. And that's hard when you're doing the work to pop up and be like, well, now let me evaluate how I'm working.

Blake Howard: Right, right.

Sonny Bonnell: But the truth of the matter is, is when you write it down, you actually go deep on what you. Where you're spending your time. You're. You'll surprise yourself at how much time you're spending on things that aren't actually moving. The needle or the process that you've developed no longer works for the situation you are currently in or the amount of people that you have. And also to be self aware enough to look out amongst your team and say, okay, what's the feeling? What's the temperature in the room? And then trying to get underneath that and trying to help alleviate the pressure.

Blake Howard: Yeah. So I want to transition and talk about AI because it's very much connected to the conversation around efficiency. We have some clients that their executives, you know, they're the brand team. And then their executives are saying, tell us what you're doing with AI. And then they come to us and say, hey, my executive said, what are we doing with AI? What should we be doing with AI? You know, And I think it's an interesting point in time where clearly on the. The precipice of gigantic change, the future is unknown. Uh, how. How is Motto currently using or thinking about AI in your work?

Sonny Bonnell: Well, it's an interesting time, I think, for creatives and creative, I think in. Just in general, in the land. I mean, look at the film industry and everything. You know, I mean, we've had CGI, but now it's, it's certainly we're, uh, 10Xing all of those things. I think for us we've done some pretty interesting things. I mean, we've been using AI for a while and it was usually to sort of streamline, almost like a sparring partner.

Speaker D: Right.

Sonny Bonnell: Like analyzing data or doing really repetitive tasks that we were doing. And AI can do better. Um, interestingly, we launched Ah ah, not a service so far, but it's kind of like a tool, if you will, um, called the Perception map. And we did that in combination with AI and our own data. And we've been slowly releasing this out and for clients and it's just been a hit. And it's really cool because I was like, gosh, we could probably couldn't have done that a couple years ago as quickly as we did. And as efficient as we did, using our own data and our own insights, but kind of building out the frameworks for it. And I was like, that's a really interesting unit use case. We also encourage early adoption. We want our team to understand these tools because it reminds me, I think you mentioned this before we hit record,

Speaker D: but we were talking about, you know, we've been in the industry, both of

Sonny Bonnell: us, since 2005, almost 20 years.

Narrator: We don't need to go on the

Blake Howard: record with how old we are anymore, you know.

Speaker D: Right.

Blake Howard: I mean, I was 20, so, uh,

Speaker D: I was like, pretty young. But, you know, I remember going into

Sonny Bonnell: a printer and at the time there was still yellow page ads and all

Speaker D: the, all the stuff that, you know, digital printing. And I remember that the printer was like, oh, there's a, there was a

Sonny Bonnell: digital printer in the corner.

Speaker D: They're like, we got one, but nobody wants to use it yet. And within like a matter of weeks, it was just like their old printing presses were. And then these things were, were piling in like robots.

Sonny Bonnell: And I think that it would be foolish of us to revere the way things have always been done and not train our team to be ethically sound and also to be early adopters of this technology to, ah, at the very least know what it is and what it is doing and how it's being utilized and then how to use it responsibly, if at all. I do think that this is probably one of the greatest, most disruptive technologies in the world. And, you know, will we find our footing in it? I think that is to be told. But you're right in the moment. I think taste and judgment and, and, and, and craftsmanship is still at play here. I think storytelling is still at play. Human, uh, judgment is still in, in interplay. And I think that those things are still, still very much real and in effect at the moment. Who's to say what the future of that, of AI looks like? But I think right now I think teams are wise to be exploring what those horizons are. It's really cool that you're doing this and talking about these kind of things out. And it's so important because leadership is so, I think running an agency right now in particular, sometimes you're like, am I the only one feeling this? Or, you know, and it's nice to have like, a community where you can, you can tap into and just say, how are you solving that? Or what are you seeing in your team? And it's, it's nice to have that camaraderie.

Blake Howard: Yeah. And I'm genuinely curious. I genuinely want to know what does Motto think about these things that I think about?

Narrator: Okay, that's a wrap on today's special Inside the Studio bonus episode. Big shout out to Sunny Bonnell for her, uh, time. But wait, there's more. We have yet another Inside the Studio episode in the works, and this one's with yours truly talking about Matchstick.

Blake Howard: But I'm going to bring in some

Narrator: friends to help so you don't just get tired of hearing my voice the entire time. I'm going to host a conversation with Brit Blankenship, one of our creative directors, and Cam Liebrecht, our messaging director, talking about some signature projects, our culture, and some lessons they've learned along the way, helping our clients. Be sure to follow A Change of Brand on Instagram at A Change of Brand as we Prepare for Season 7. Today's episode was edited and scored by Adam Audio, produced by Brianna Belcher. Sarah Pepper designed this episode's artwork, and

Blake Howard: I'm your host, Blake Howard, signing off.